I Had a Dream...

My post title is clearly in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. whose birthday America observed on Monday this week.  In Germany, of course, it was just another day, although a nice day to be in touch with friends and family back home as weekends are often so busy for everyone.

But last night, I really did have a dream...and part of it was in German!  Isn't that, like, a sign that I'm starting to get it?!?

In my dream, we were visiting back home and I was treating my mom, sisters, Autumn, and myself to a girls spa day at this cute little chalet.  When the girl brought me the bill I was glancing it over to be certain the charges were correct but she asked, "Are you checking for my Trinkgeld?" (gratuity, tip) and I gasped, "Are you from Germany?!" and she smoothed out her apron like you'd wear over a Dirndl and said, "Ja."  So all excited I was like, "Ich wohne in Berlin!" (I live in Berlin) and she was all, "Ich komme aus Bayern-München!" (I come from Bavaria--Munich --which is probably not really how you'd say it.  It's how they call the soccer team, though.)  Anyway, we had a very basic conversation auf Deutsch before my alarm went off.  Hey, I'm not that far in my language lessons although I can definitely tell I'm improving as is my confidence.

I have noticed I am able to communicate with store clerks and rather than going in with my previous "Do you speak English?" attitude I am more willing and able to just speak those simple sentences in German AND they don't automatically switch to English once they hear me...anymore.

I went in to the BVG (the public transport company) to try to sort something out last week and walking in I told the woman, "I can only speak a little German" (but in German, of course: "Ich kann nur ein bisschen Deutsch sprechen.") and she just sort of was like, "Das ist okay" rather than like, "I speak some English, what can I do you for, Pardner?" and we were able to have our small conversation about how Autumn is now 6 and I need to get her monthly transport ticket but oh wait, you'll need to reapply for Dalton and your daughter because she is now the youngest and she needs to hold the main Schüler ticket and the others will be the siblings.  And also you need two new pictures for Dalton and your daughter.  "So I can't do this today?" (in German)  "Leider nicht." (unfortunately not) which I did not know this expression at all until my class.  Yay!  Jason was like, "Well that sucks that you couldn't take care of it" and I was like, "I'm focusing on the positive: I did it all in German!!!" and it's not like I walked away all confused about why I could not do it and needing to return with a German-speaker.  I understood 100%!

I booked Easton's birthday party online as well and in the email I wrote in my bad German and apologized for my crap German and said I spoke English hoping she did too.  I wrote in German but then also again (more clearly) in English but every time she responded it was in German.  Even when we went to the venue she spoke German--I didn't even try in English!  

I was able to eavesdrop on two moms the other morning as well.  Easton's class recently had some major drama with what they call "cyber mobbing" which is not quite bullying but had to do with the kids and their phones.  Easton is the only (poor, deprived) child in his class that does not have a phone but I knew enough about what was going on.  The other morning two of the moms were discussing the drama some more and I could hear the one mom imitiating one little girl in German, "She doesn't like me!  She doesn't like me!" and then she named off a few of the kids in this problematic group and was like, "Was ist der Name des anderen?" (What's the name of the other one) and I wanted to supply the girl's name for her but I was just eavesdropping, remember?  Anyway...it is very exciting for me.  Ha ha ha!

Another development, is being better able to help my kids.  I have mentioned before that the math classes at our international school are taught in German.  So, yesterday Easton had his second big test of the year and it was geometry and I was trying to help him study, but I would say the shapes in English which he mostly knew, but really he had to know them all in German.  It was 3D shapes and their nets and all that which he's always been fairly good at.  So, quizzing him I'd be like, "How many angles does it have?" and he'd be like, "What?  What's an angle?" and I'd realize, "Oh yeah, he doesn't think of math terminology in English so much anymore" so then I could be like, "Wie viele Ecken?" and he would know!  Or, "Wie viele Kanten?" ('How many edges?' knowing that word thanks to the U-bahn announcements telling you to "mind the gap between platform [edge] (Bahnsteigkante) and train")  It's all starting to come together!  Finally!  

I had conferences for Autumn yesterday and her math teacher was telling me how she is struggling a bit with subtraction.  I was surprised by this, to be honest (my child!?! ), and wondered if it was just her being lazy or if she truly struggled.  She truly struggles, apparently.  So then I wondered if it was perhaps because of the intricacies of German she might not understand and they were like, "Uh, no, that's not it...Autumn is excellent in German.  We always speak German.  She is very impressive."  (Go, Goose!!!) 

Anyway, Autumn asked what her teachers said and I told her we needed to work on subtraction and she was like, "What's subtraction?" so then I had to say, "Um, minus?" (but pronouncing it in German so it sounds more like mee-nous) and then she understood.  She has some other word for it too: "wegnehmen,".  Maybe that's similar to what the American children say as "Take-away", you know?

I had been afraid that her German would suffer upon leaving her German kindergarten but it's only gotten stronger at our bilingual school.  Other than in English class, I believe most of her day is in German as her class teacher is a German native and all the students seem to be at least German-English bilingual unlike in the boys' classes where there's 4 or so students with no German background whatsoever.

But we're all coming along finally.  All of us.  Easton's finally changed his attitude towards German and is actually working at it versus his previous way of trying as hard as he could not to learn it.  He had excuse after excuse for why he didn't need to learn.  His teachers have emphasized that it should be his primary focus right now: more than Maths or Science, his priority should be German.  I even had to have a special additional conference about him and his attitude towards it.  Eek!   

We'll get there.  I don't know how far I'll go in my classes because they're expensive and intensive but I enjoy it now because I walk out of my four hours of class thinking in German(ish).  That's huge, right!?

Anyway, soon my Deutsch Träume will be slightly more complicated than last night's, right?  A girl can dream...

XI

Eleven.

No one seems to learn Roman numerals anymore.  Well, homeschoolers perhaps.  But this is neither here nor there.  I'm here to talk about someone being eleven.



8:08 a.m (a.k.a. "B:OB o'clock"), January 9, 2016 the moment Easton turned 11 years old.  Okay, if we're going to get that technical then probably we should have done it at 4:08 p.m as that's when it's BOB o'clock in Boulder, Colorado where he was born.

Luckily, this year Easton's birthday was on a Saturday.  He woke up to a display of gifts and our apparent tradition (in Berlin) of Dunkin Donuts for breakfast:


He got to open a few things right off the bat:








Then we had a little breakfast.  I made each kid choose a protein to have with their one doughnut.   We put a candle in E's and sang to him.


Then he and Dalton jumped right into checking out some of the new figures he got for the Disney Infinity 3.0 game he got for Christmas.


He opened some more gifts, including this special handmade-by-Autumn card and drawing. <3




And some new shades that aren't covered in cartoon characters.  Trying to look tough:


You look weird: look happy!


Ha!

One of the highlights was the Kylo Ren lightsaber he'd really wanted.  Kylo Ren is the new Star Wars bad guy if you're one of the 10 people who does not yet know.


He played some more and we had some lunch and then headed to see the Peanuts movie that came to Berlin just before Christmas.  He had asked if we could see it for his birthday:


After the movie we went to get ice cream as I'm a bit lame and didn't want to make a cake for just us, a cake for his party, and treats to bring to school.  So, ice cream it was.  And he'd requested I make my homemade mac and cheese for his dinner.  Awww.

He got to open one final present once we arrived home which was a customizable Nerf gun.  He was a happy boy.  Actually he was sad at bedtime that it was all over.  He wisely opted to have his party on a different day so he'd have more time to celebrate himself but was still sad when bedtime came around.

However, he had his party to look forward to the following weekend.  He initially wanted to have a Laser Tag party, but for whatever (odd) reason, you have to be, like, 12 or 14 to play laser tag in Berlin.  A friend from church suggested Go Kart racing as an alternative.  You had to be 9 years old and 1.35 m tall (4' 5").  It ruled out Dalton (and Autumn) for being too short and other friends' siblings for being too young but we booked it anyway and I'm so glad we did.

It was a blast!!


Three of his classmates have had parties this year where they invited the entire class!  One mom even arranged to transport all 16 kids to the party after school on a Friday!  We let Easton invite only 5 friends.  They had two party choices with 2 or 3 races.  2 races would obviously cost a little less and he could add one more friend to the mix but he opted for 3 races with 5 friends.  It was just right. 

But anyway, it was probably one of my favorite parties we've had for the kids.  It was in this really neat indoor track but it wasn't super loud because the carts were electric and it wasn't super crowded either.  They had Mario Kart on the Wii on the wall and some air hockey and a couple other similar games while the kids waited to race.

One kid was late (he's always always always late, poor guy) so Jason raced in his spot for the first race.  Hey, we paid for 6, right?  So fun!  It was only our group racing at one time so there were no random "big kids" ramming into them and the track wasn't too crowded to really "step on it" if you were so inclined. 





It gave you a printout of all the times at the end of the race so the kids could figure out who the winners were.  There was one other party there at the same time and we sort of alternated races. The shorties found ways to entertain themselves:
 











 

In the second race, the poor late kid still wasn't there so one of the taller younger siblings got to fill in.  As soon as that race started, late kid walked in.  You snooze, you lose, cowboy.

At that point, Jason had proposed a grown-ups race as most of the parents had stayed at the Kartbahn because it was too far to go for such a short party.  It was only Jason and me and our Scottish friends that opted to race.  Just the four of us out there and it was SO FUN!  I had so much fun I didn't even care that I came in third.  ;)


The kids (and late boy, finally) had their third and final race.  Easton came off all mad because one of his friends called him a name and he huffed over to me in a big pout to where all his friends thought he was mad that he'd lost.  (He isn't that competitive.)   He got over it and they brought out the pizzas.





I asked (and had assumed) Easton would not eat his whole pizza so I asked him to give a piece to his sister. He refused me but Jason insisted.  Easton made a big, loud complaint about how Dad "made him" and it wasn't fair and blah blah blah. Well, she was still hungry after her first piece so I asked him for another and he said no.  I asked Autumn if she could just wait for some cake to help "fill up".  No.  She needed pizza.  So, I went and ordered another entire pizza for Autumn.  In the meantime, I started to get the cake ready but I look over and see that Easton has one piece of pizza on his plate.  He's full. 

Argh!!!

I was like, "Oh, so too full for cake then?"
"Well, no."
"You are going to finish that piece of pizza."
"But, I can't!"
"Sorry, dude, you made a huge deal of how you were going to eat the whole thing and would not share so I went and ordered another entire pizza for Autumn.  You are going to eat that before we have cake."

I would ordinarily never insist my children eat all of something.  Never.  Except that he was so ugly about how the whole thing was his and he would not share even though I knew he wouldn't be able to eat it all.  So, dude had to learn his lil lesson.  I don't think I was being super mean about it, at least not in a mean tone or anything and I even joked to the others how I'm the meanest mom ever for insisting he finish this before we move on.  All his friends were done and cheering him on, "C'mon, Easton...just eat it!" Like it was a Survivor challenge.

Poor kid.

He got it down and I lit the candles.


And they all had cake.  "Full" Easton had room for seconds somehow.

Autumn was then in tears about, "Do I have to eat pizza first?" and I was like, "Um yes.  You made me order that.  You said you needed it and cake wasn't enough. So yes, you have to eat some pizza first.  Don't worry, your cake will still be there." 

Just call me Mommie Dearest, eh?  ;)

The party finished after some more Wii Mario Karts and just general 5th grader-ing.  This year his party included his Scottish male friend and his Zimbabwean male friend from last year's party and the addition of his German male friend and two girls: one from Iran and one who is German mother tongue but her father is from Palestine originally and they had previously been living in Dubai.  I just love all the international-ness still.  Can't get over it.  Seriously, all our friends back home it was like, "Oh, what hospital was he born in?"  That's about as varied as it got with our friends 'round Denver.

We came home and then Easton was sort of quiet and let me know he was never going to forget how I had embarrassed him. :(  I felt terrible but I was also confused as he'd had a huge grumpy pout when his friend called him an "idiot" and when he argued against having to share any pizza.  Those events apparently weren't embarrassing but me saying, "Sorry dude, you've got to eat it since you said you were going to eat it ALL" in front of his friends was too embarrassing.  And now telling all the internet, of course. 

Being 11 is hard.  Sometimes he feels like a little fella and wants constant snuggles from Mom and then sometimes he cares what his friends think and Mom embarrassed him.  No wonder they call them 'tweenagers.  He is definitely growing up, though, and it's pretty cool to see.

A very happy birthday to our 11 year old!

London -- Day 8

Our last day.  Mostly spent traveling.

We picked up around the flat and packed up our remaining things.  It was raining a bit and we decided to bring our suitcases with us and 'check out' of the holiday flat.

With the rain and needing to kill a bit of time till our 5:45 p.m. flight, we decided to head to the Westfield shopping center /mall.  One of the first stores we saw was another Disney Store.  I sat with the suitcases and the free WiFi and Jason went inside with the kids.



We shopped a few other stores including Next (I've only ever shopped online) and even bought a Christmas gift for Dalton (a book...in English...on sale) to bring back with us.  Before long we decided we'd better get some lunch.  The mall had a large (and very busy!) food court.  We took turns waiting in line for things we wanted and staying with the kids and suitcases.  Easton had more fish and chips!  Autumn had some stuff we cleaned out of the fridge in the flat...cheese and yogurts and I popped open a Pimm's (some 'well-known' UK liqueur) that I'd bought from the grocery store to try.



Wanting to make sure we had plenty of time for our commute, we decided to leave shortly after that, taking the tube back to Victoria station.  We turned our transit passes (Oyster cards) back in to get a refund on the cards.  First I had to wait in a super long line again and then they had difficulties putting the money back on our credit card.  They blamed it on my bank.  Refunding me in cash wasn't an option, apparently. But okay...  I think they wanted me to say "Oh, just forget it" but I wasn't gonna. I stood there while she called America for some authorization code and --their fault-- the cards were done in two separate transactions so they needed two separate transactions and two authorization codes (and therefore two phone calls) to put all the money back.

We were then hoping to buy some Krispy Kremes Dalton had excitedly spotted on our trip in (we don't have Krispy Kreme in Germany) but they were already closed at, like, 2 pm. :(  Big bummer.

Instead we got back on the Gatwick Express for our train ride back down to the Gatwick airport.  Dalton entertained himself with seeing what names he could create using only the letters in our first names.



Autumn wrote things.  First try EVER and she spelled my name exactly right:





So fun!

We arrived at the airport and  again, had lots of time to kill.





We wandered around taking turns with the kids. Eventually we popped into Boots and picked up pieces of their "meal deal" to have for our semi-dinner on the plane.  Eventually we were able to board and we headed home for our rather uneventful flight.

(This is me making the single bottle of water I bought work for more than one of us.) :)


We've gotten really good at helping Autumn manage her motion sickness.  Essential oil and also making sure she's at the window and looks out a bunch when possible, especially take off and landing. The kid a few rows up puked but not my Goose!

We collected our luggage and made our journey back home.  What a trip!

London -- day 7

Our last full day in London.  Time to try to squeeze in just a few more of those "when don't know if/when we'll be back!" activities.

A lot of other people had the same idea, however, so we made sure to get to the popular (and free) museum first thing when it opened.

But first: breakfast.  We went back to that Le Pain Quotidien place we had been to with our landlady.  Well, a different location near the museums.  Now that I think about it, it was our second time to this location.  Third time total.  Yum.




We parted ways with Jason after breakfast and the kids and I headed to the Natural History Museum while Jason went to visit the Imperial War Museum.  He is very interested in such things and I wanted him to be able to do something he wanted to do before time ran out.




The kids and I would rather see dinosaurs!

There was a small queue for the museum with all the LON kids on half-term but it moved quickly and then we headed straight for the dinosaurs.  There is a huge queue area but, thankfully, we were there early enough we could walk right in.  I told the kids to notice, though, that later it would be full of people waiting for the dinosaurs and indeed, it was.


We got to see bones.  At one time, before the boys came up with "E.D. Industries", Easton wanted to be a paleontologist.




I could not get over the beauty of the room that the above dino was in.  The kids were like, "Mom you seem like you're more impressed with the building than the dinosaur."  And I totally was.  My picture sucks, of course but this one from the internet helps show you what I'm talking about:


So lovely.

Then it was into the proper dino area with the animatronic stuff, among other things:


After that we headed to the bathrooms and Easton was like, "Aw, we never saw a pteryodactyl" and then leaving the bathroom there was one on the wall:


That might be a pteranodon, I don't really know (or care) enough to know the difference.  Heck, it could be none of those things.  We just thought it was crazy how were talking about it and then came right upon one.

We then headed into the fiery ball behind the kids here:




That escalator takes you right inside.  That part felt like EPCOT or something.  And up there we learned about earthquakes and volcanoes.  "Ahhhhhh! Lava!"




They had an earthquake simulator which was fun as well as we have never lived near any fault lines.  I would wager a guess that an actual earthquake would be less fun. Dalton was bothered that nothing fell off the shelves.  "That's not very accurate."

We had a smidge more time before we needed to meet back up with Jason so we headed to the Human Biology section as I've passed the love of such things on to the kids.  They had a giant model of a 7 month fetus which was cool:




Autumn is in the new-reader stage where she sounds out everything and announced loudly, "This says testes!"


We explored a few more things in that area but could have spent a ton more time in there.  We love those kinds of exhibits with stuff to do. Keeps us from kicking 5th century B.C. pillars.  ;)

Jason came to meet us in front of the museum and we headed back to the flat for some lunch.  It was time to try some "foreign" candy: Malteasers.  (No, we don't have these in America.)  They were 'meh'.  I don't love malted stuff, though.  I would never eat any Whoppers I got when Trick-or-Treating.


After lunch, the kids were really not motivated to go anywhere or do anything.  We had been running them pretty ragged trying to squeeze so much content into our trip.  Jason 'volunteered' to stay in the flat with them and let them chill and watch TV and stuff while I went out on my own for a bit.


First I bought myself one of these from the Paddington Station Starbucks for a souvenir.  (I have a Berlin one too. I wish (now) that I had Barcelona as well.)


After that, I decided I would check out some Harry Potter sites so I made my way over to the real King's Cross station:




The inside:


They had a little platform 9 3/4 model (with a Hedwig!)


And a huge line to do pictures:




But, it was no where near the actual platforms 9 or 10.  Lame.  Since I already had a picture of me going through the wall from the WB studios, I opted for a quick "Kristin was here" selfie (see it up over my right shoulder?) and moved on:


I then headed over to Leadenhall Market which is what they used for some of the exterior shots from Diagon Alley outside the Leaky Cauldron.




It wasn't all that exciting over there.  And way less colorful than I thought it would be.

I tried to visit the Millennium Bridge to maybe walk across it or something but I started to run out of time.  I was meeting Jason and the kids back up at Westminster Abbey for their 5 p.m. Evensong service.


We warned the kids how different it would be from what we are used to.  It was neat to be able to see the inside.  The altar where Will and Kate just stood a few years ago.  It was right there!  You can't take pictures, of course, but it was lovely and we walked right past Sir Isaac Newton's 'grave'.  It looked like this:


The church looked lovely at night.  I tried to capture it:


Nope.

Need a picture from the internet again:


We walked by lit up Parliament and "Big Ben"/Elizabeth Tower and I tried to capture that too:




Dalton said, "Hey, it's almost 6:00, we should listen to Big Ben chime."  So we did:


Ugh, why are my pictures so bad?


Internet to the rescue!


And then we hopped on the train and began our extremely tiring journey of trying to find a "traditional pub" to eat in.  We walked into one, sat down.  They told us that table was reserved.  There were no others.  We left.  We went to another.  We sat down.  Their food was not going to work for us.  We left.  And then we went to a third one. I wasn't going to go to a fourth. So we sat and ordered.  And it was just fine.


Easton with some fish and chips (he ate this, like, three times in a row):


My dinner. It was some sort of veggie pie.


And then dessert of sticky toffee pudding.


Yummmmmm!




At the end our bill came and we had to make the kids dig out any remaining change they had in their pockets and used every last pound we had to pay for the meal.  (We didn't have to change any money back this way!)  Too funny!


And finally we were able to head back to the flat for our last night.  During prayers, Easton hilariously sang the "Amen" like they did at the choral Evensong.  Hysterical.

Our final day with our trip home is here.